Sometimes a lack of upsets in the early going of the NCAA Tournament is followed by a bunch of close games later. Sometimes it is not.
The 2009 NCAA tourney saw 14 of the top 16 overall seeds advance to the regional semifinals. Yet, by any measure, the rest of the tournament from that point was a bore, maybe one of the least remarkable tourneys in the history of the event.
In that tournament’s final 15 games, only five were decided by as few as nine points. Three were by five points or less and just one of them by a single possession (Villanova’s terrific East Regional final win over then-Big East rival Pittsburgh for Jay Wright’s first Final Four). Ten were decided by double-digit margins, and the average margin of victory from the regional semis through the national title game was 13.47 points.
In the case of the 2019 NCAA Tournament, the final rounds saved the bacon for an event that was eminently forgettable and historically rated poor after its first week.
Ten of the final 15 games were decided by single digits and/or in overtime. Nine of them were decided by five point or less/overtime. Seven were by a single possession/OT.
Those totals helped this year’s tourney go from a relative snooze the first week to representative in many areas, and in some even well ahead.
For the entire 67-game event, 30 games were decided by single digits or in overtime. That’s in the ballpark with recent years-even with 2016, one less in that category than a year ago, and quite a bit behind the 36 such games in both 2015 and 2017. The average is 32.89 games in this category since the tourney expanded to its current 68 teams playing 67 games beginning in 2011.
A total of 19 games were decided by five points or less or in overtime. Thirteen fell into the category of ‘close games’ as defined by the NCAA’s own Final Four Records Book, games decided by a single possession or in overtime.
The 13 close games is near but slightly below the average of 14.38 such games since the field expanded to 68 teams in 2011. It’s also below the average of 13.85 since the field went to 64 in 1985.
The tourney did finish with five overtime games, four of those from the regional semifinals on. That’s the most extra-session games since there were seven in 2014 and tied for the second-most since 2009. The five OT games are tied with ten other tourneys for the sixth-most in a year since the tourney expanded to 64 teams and at least 63 games.
By another measure, though, this year’s tourney still as a whole was sub-par. The average margin of victory for the 67 games was 12.30 points. That is the 18th-highest average score differential in 80 years of this event. If one wants to stick to more modern era numbers, it’s the 10th-highest since the tourney field expanded to 64 teams in 1985.
Perhaps one reason why the tourney had so many close games in the later rounds was because scoring was down. Tourney scoring as a whole was more than two points per game lower than the regular season-an average of 70.18 ppg throughout the tournament’s 67 games.
In the final 15 games, that fell to 70.03 points per game. It’s even worse, though, if one takes away overtime periods; in regulation, teams were averaging 66.77 points per game over the final two weekends. Obviously defense-minded teams like Texas Tech and Virginia advancing late were part of the reason for that. There also was unquestionably another reason.
Officiating is a tough job, and from here is oft over-scrutinized in our high-definition, slow-motion, social media outrage-driven world. Often complaints focus on one potentially missed call when they could just as easily be zeroed in on another. (See: the uncalled double-dribble at the end of the Virginia/Auburn Final Four game, which included Tiger defender Bryce Brown obviously grabbing the jersey of UVA’s Ty Jerome immediately before the dribbling violation) A lot of times the human aspect of officiating needs to be embraced more than it is.
With that said, it can’t be avoided that officiating in this year’s tourney has to be discussed. Whether it was a directive by the NCAA or CBS, or just officials deciding amongst themselves to go easier, there was a blatant change in how the game was called from how it has been the last three years, since freedom of movement rules were reinforced as part of a number of other changes in the sport.
The NCAA can save its time sending its weekly officiating emphasis emails to member schools, media and officials if it’s going to allow such a drastic alteration in how games are called just because the calendar turns to March. This year’s tourney made a mockery of freedom of movement rules, with teams regularly at just 3-4 fouls in a half as games wound down. Teams don’t suddenly start playing less aggressively in the NCAA Tournament (if anything, it’s the opposite), so it’s hard to take a single one of those in-season points of emphasis seriously when they’re going to be clearly ignored in the postseason.
The precipitous drop in fouls called was a problem because it so obviously rewarded certain teams for taking liberties defensively. Oregon engaged in more hand-checking than we’ve seen in a couple years, and Texas Tech was another team that pushed every boundary reaching in, grabbing and slapping when the ball went inside. The amount of contact Red Raiders were allowed as they all but attacked Gonzaga players catching in the paint in the West Regional final was almost embarrassing.
Physicality is going to happen, and of course, no one enjoys fouls being called. Still, history has shown so many times that if fouls aren’t called, then scoring will go down. If people want scoring, there have to be fouls.
More importantly, taking as many liberties as possible defensively should not be a strategy, yet in this year’s tourney it absolutely was a wise one if a team wanted to keep advancing. If this is what the NCAA wants, then it needs to get out and state it, preferably while also acknowledging forfeiture of the right to complain or demand more shot clock shrinking the next time scoring takes a dive.
To whom much is given, much is required. That Gospel lesson from the 12th chapter of Luke might help in understanding that, even as the Atlantic Coast Conference furnished a national champion, its overall NCAA Tournament performance still did not measure up to what was expected beforehand, when it comes to evaluating how conferences actually performed in the tourney vs. how they were seeded to do.
The ACC led the way among conferences with its 15 wins. It also far and away finished furthest below the number of wins it was seeded for entering the tourney, with its 15-6 record still well below the 21-6 mark it was seeded for.
The big reason for that is because the league pulled down three of the four No. 1 seeds, yet only one of those teams made it to the Final Four. Duke was seeded to win the whole thing, while North Carolina was seeded to make the Final Four; that’s already five less wins that the league was seeded for, plus a loss added when Duke was eliminated. Even Virginia winning it all only made up for a little of that, since the Cavaliers were seeded to be in the title game anyhow.
Among conferences that had at least two bids or had at least one team advance past the first round:
| Conference | Expected record by seed before tourney | Actual tourney record | Wins +/- expected |
| Big Ten | 10-8 | 13-8 | +3 |
| Pac-12 | 1-3 | 4-3 | +3 |
| SEC | 11-7 | 12-7 | +1 |
| Big 12 | 7-6 | 8-6 | +1 |
| OVC | 1-2 | 2-2 | +1 |
| Atlantic Sun | 0-1 | 1-1 | +1 |
| Big West | 0-1 | 1-1 | +1 |
| WCC | 3-2 | 3-2 | Even |
| American | 3-4 | 3-4 | Even |
| MAC | 1-1 | 1-1 | Even |
| Southern | 1-1 | 1-1 | Even |
| Big East | 2-4 | 1-4 | -1 |
| Atlantic 10 | 1-2 | 0-2 | -1 |
| Mountain West | 2-2 | 0-2 | -2 |
| ACC | 21-6 | 15-6 | -6 |
A couple other takeaways: The ACC’s outlier aside, in general this was a year where most leagues performed right about how they were seeded to. The only other conference to go even minus-2 was the Mountain West, where Nevada and Utah State lost as 7 and 8 seeds, respectively, and only two leagues were even more than a plus-one. They were the Big Ten and…Pac-12. The Big Ten had four teams post at least one win more than expected (Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio State, Purdue) and only one lost early (Wisconsin). The Pac-12 was helped by Oregon, with the Ducks knocking out Wisconsin and then benefitting from getting a 13 seed in the second round. Washington also won an 8/9 game as the lower seed, and Arizona State won its play-in game as expected… The Ohio Valley undoubtedly will be thrilled with its performance. The league put two teams in the field for the first time since 1987, and won twice in the tourney for the first time since then-member Western Kentucky made the Final Four in 1971… On the other hand, the Big East went from nine wins and a national title a year ago to just one this year. That was easily the biggest drop in performance, with the Missouri Valley also going from four wins a year ago from Loyola Chicago’s Final Four run to none this year.
CBS has been a steady hand covering the NCAA Tournament for almost 40 years, including nearly 30 years now where it has been responsible for the entire event, either on its own or-since 2011-with Turner Sports.
CBS’s coverage of the tourney rarely has changed a whole lot in that time. Most seem OK with that, judging that griping about its coverage ironically seems to have gone down some in this age where every dislike becomes a borderline scandal on social media. Certainly, the network is doing some things right.
That said, though, from this perspective, the networks’ coverage of the NCAAs this year felt off. More than any time in a long time, the tourney on TV felt…stale.
CBS and Turner’s general work is a meat-and-potatoes approach. It’s not great, it’s not awful. In quite a few ways, it’s a plus, especially compared to what we get a heaping helping of during the regular season. CBS is the anti of ESPN’s Duke-centric and NBA-forward coverage that is so obviously influenced by a Duke slant throughout its main talent ranks, as well as a mongo NBA television contract.
For that, we’re grateful for CBS and Turner. The use of too many NBA announcers moonlighting is a negative-especially when knowing there are so many good college basketball analysts out there who deserve the opportunity and would do the event far more justice. But if it’s that or bio blasts and mandated talking points of Zion Williamson every broadcast, we’ll take the former.
There is a such thing as being too vanilla, though, and increasingly NCAA Tournament games have taken on a cookie-cutter feel, perhaps because that’s the way the NCAA apparently likes it.
The games are played on cookie-cutter courts in cookie-cutter NBA/NHL arenas. The shorter shot clock has ensured that almost every team plays the exact same way. Everyone runs the same ball-screen offenses, the same man-to-man defenses, shoots a ton of three-pointers and apparently never fouls in the postseason.
Much of that, of course, is not CBS’s fault. There are entirely too many timeouts, though, and for too long-2 1/2 minutes for each full timeout, of which there are five in every half (four TV timeouts, as well as the first called team timeout of each half). One can bet their retirement account that those timeouts will come quickly as soon as an opponent puts together a run of six or-at most-eight straight points, ensuring that every time something interesting starts to happen, there’s an extra-long stoppage to break the momentum.
The NBA drop-in announcers add little. The broadcasts also are too tight, often joined a minute or two before tip and departed from just about as quickly when the game is over. Commercial breaks seem to start a split second after a timeout is called on the floor. It all means there’s very little time for insight, graphics, or room for the telecast to breathe in general.
(It’s also a complete joke that, just about every single year, the NCAA/networks have at least one instance of starting an evening session of first round games with hardly any fans in the stands, due to the requirement to clear arenas before admitting/readmitting fans for the second sessions. Clearing the arena is a necessary evil for ticket purposes, since tickets are sold by sessions. It’s flat-out robbery, though, to schedule start times when it’s obvious to everyone involved with putting on the event that those who bought second session tickets may not get in until midway through the first half. It also results in virtually no atmosphere for a good chunk of those games. And the networks and the NCAA could easily work around it if they wanted to by just allowing more time between sessions.)
Where the current coverage really fails, though, and has for years, is in covering the tournament in the early rounds as one, unified, major event, and covering it all in-depth.
If you’re watching one game, you get essentially no info about other games, save for the scoreticker up top. Everything seems to happen in a vacuum; there is next to nothing setting the table telling us about teams or big happenings of the day.
When there’s a big upset in the making or that has happened, or a storyline developing in a game, there’s no one with CBS or Turner who can tell viewers about the teams in detail, or maybe better to say is allowed to. The studio work that is employed is often rudimentary, repetitive and decidedly dull, and not even Charles Barkley hamming it up changes that.
Story development could go a long way in helping fans get to know the teams and players in this event. This is something ESPN used to do with spectacular success back in the day, when it covered the early rounds of the tourney in the 1980s. Even in CBS’s earlier years with full coverage, it featured more studio work, as well as brief drop-ins into games once a half.
For those of us older-timers who remember it, CBS’s coverage of early rounds has never quite measured up to the work ESPN famously did when it covered the NCAAs. CBS and Turner are also clearly devoted to their single-game coverage without interruption of other games. As such, we would love to see CBS add one more coverage channel, either on its main affiliates or else on CBS Sports Network, and do so in the vein of ESPN’s old early round coverage in the 80s.
Choose a featured schedule of 5-6 games in a day, and stay with those games in general. We’re not talking about ESPN’s current disjointed whiparound coverage of the women’s tournament-pick a set of featured games. However, keep the freedom to cut in to other games, especially at the end, and provide consistent studio coverage throughout the day.
This would allow those who wanted it to get a better picture of the tourney at-large, and also to get quality studio analysis on a regular basis. It also would create some more positions for in-depth college basketball people to cover the event.
Also, and we’ve advocated for this before, but CBS should consider a few more standalone games whenever possible. The obvious choice would be both nights of the first round, almost certainly played in the West Regional.
CBS once did this when ESPN held the lion’s share of first round coverage. The network also has had big success with standalone second round games in recent years. Wichita State/Kentucky, Notre Dame/Stephen F. Austin and this year Duke/Central Florida are among the most memorable games over the past couple years, in part because they were the only games in their time slot.
Even with slightly improved staggered start times in recent years, there are so many games played at the same times in the early rounds that it can quickly feel like a jumble. Pick a game each night to put in the spotlight, and to also relieve some of the congestion when 3-4 games are so regularly going on at the same time. There’s really no reason why West sub-regional games are starting at just about the same time as East sub-regional games, anyway. Use the time zone difference as an advantage.
Twitter: @HoopvilleAdam
